Become A Better Trader

Rob Hoffman of Become A Better Trader proclaims to be a “25X World Champion Trader.” And he wants you to pay him up to $10,000 to learn his precious trading secrets.

Before you take out your credit card, you better understand that this “25X World Champion Trader” is little more than a carnival huckster that has no verifiable track record of ever earning a nickel at trading. The “World Champion Trader” title is little more than a pay-to-play promotional scheme.

Rob Hoffman has a long and ugly history of selling all manner of “get rich quick” trading nonsense to the retail trading masses. Complaints have stacked up in an ugly tower of pain and disappointment for those that have trusted this charlatan.

According to Archive.Org, it appears that the BecomeABetterTrader.com website first appeared on the trading educational scene sometime in 2012.

Rob Hoffman: Prior Investment Educational Websites

Rob Hoffman is not new to the trading educational scene. According to Archive.org, interviews with prior purchasers of his products, and data snooping tools, we have discovered various other affiliations dating back to 2001. Some of these include:

TradeTheMarkets.Com: A live day trading room by John Carter, Hubert Senters, and Rob Hoffman. Yet more negative reviews, the business was rebranded and the domain changed to SimplerTrading.com.

The Rob Hoffman Sales Pitch: “I am a champion trader!”

When visiting the Become A Better Trader website, the very first thing that you see is an enormous declaration that Rob Hoffman is a 25X World Champion Trader. That he has “won more domestic and international, on-site, real money trading competitions than anyone else in the world!”

International Trading Champion?

That sure sounds impressive. Right? However, the truth is that Rob Hoffman is a trading champion in his own mind. These “Trading Championships” are nothing but ridiculous promotional competitions being offered by the trading seminar circuit.

The “Trading Competitions” are corny staged events that take place at The Traders Expo, Money Show, or various European promotional tours.

These competitions are usually nothing more than two people trading on laptop computers for an hour. The person that wins the most, or loses the least, is crowned THE WORLD CHAMPION. It’s ridiculous and pathetic showmanship with the sole purpose of hustling the audience into purchasing the magic trading products of the “World Champion Trader.”

Jason Bond vs Rob Hoffman for the Trading Championship of the World!

Everyone that has been in the trading educational business knows that these public trading expositions are a complete and total fraud, meant to hustle the naive and the desperate. It’s a sideshow, a carnival act, a gimmick.

Some trading vendors have caught onto this promotional stunt and have just made up their own “World Champion Trader” competitions, where they are the only person trading and the guaranteed winner. A perfect example would be Fausto Pugliese of the popular CyberTradingUniversity.com.

Fausto Pugliese claims to the 12-time world champion of a trading competition named, The World Trader Challenge. Had an entire website that acted like a personal shrine to his supposed trading greatness. Even hired a Playboy model to be his star student and spokesperson. Complete ridiculousness from a pathetic fraudster.

Emmett Moore, the World Champion Trader

Want to know how stupid and funny these MoneyShow/Traders Expo live trading competitions? Back in 1998, I attended the Traders Expo/Money Show being held in Los Angeles, California. Yes, you guessed it…I was a vendor selling a bullshit penny stock.

Anyway, the Traders Expo asked me if I wanted to be part of a live trading competition that would compete with audience members and the well-known systems trader, Murrey Ruggiero. I said sure, I would give it a try.

At the beginning of the competition, I bought one contract of the pit traded SP500 contract. I had no idea what I was doing. For the next hour, I just sat there and did nothing else. At the end of the competition, the winner was announced. I had won! I was the International and National World Champion Trader! I received a cheap trophy and a green jacket. It was rediculous.

Later, after the Traders Expo seminar had ended, all of the vendors met at a suite for a cocktail. I showed up wearing my green jacket and carried my cheap little trophy. Everyone laughed.

Contacting Rob Hoffman

During the month of April 2017, I began a series of emails, inquiries, and phone conversations with Become A Better Trader. I made the usual request to write a review, and that I needed to show my audience some sort of proof that Rob Hoffman was actually trading successfully with a live real money account.

Rob refused to get on the telephone with me. Instead, he notified me via email that he once again had won yet another world championsip trading competition in Italy. That he was so incredibly busy with his sick wife and children and that he would “get back with me at a later time.”

After repeated phone calls, and yet more emails which were tracked in real-time, Rob Hoffman simply stopped answering. It took about two months of ridiculous back and forth mumbo-jumbo before I finally quit trying. The bottom line is that Rob Hoffman wanted nothing to do with verifying his personal trading performance.

Complaints from TradingSchools.Org readers

Since 2015, TradingSchools.Org has received 16 requests to write a review about Rob Hoffman. Of these 16 requests, 4 persons contacted me with very similar complaints.

The most common complaint is that the live trading room is just nothing more than Rob Hoffman trading on a simulator. Making verbal “buy and sell” commands for tiny scalp trades that could never be replicated by a live trading account. As some customers became disillusioned and suspicious, they asked Rob to prove he was actually trading. He refused.

It seems that Rob’s business model is ‘Turn and Burn’, where he pushes people into the promotional sewer pipe with the sole purpose of extracting as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. And then after 90 days, the customer fades away. The key for Rob is to keep his promotional sewer pipe flowing with fresh faces from the seminar circuit. Pathetic.

Truth be told, everyone that deals with Rob Hoffman nearly always describes him as affable, likable, entertaining, and pretty fun to be around. But they also describe a carnival-like huckster that would pawn grandma’s jewelry for a fast buck. He appears to be perfectly suited as a “day trading educator.”

Wrapping Things Up

There are a few World Champion Traders out there. Kevin Davey is actually a world champion trader. He got a great review. The performance was verified. I got tax returns and several years of brokerage statements.

And there are a few others that have world champion type trading performance, like Dean Jenkins at FollowMeTrades.com. A guy that is little noticed, but has lots to offer.

The point is that hiring a trading educator is OK, but you need real trading performance in order to judge performance. You need verifying brokerage statements. Not a corny little trophy proclaiming ‘World Champion’ of a one-hour trading competition.

Emmett, is a bullshitter of the highest order. Not saying all educators / rooms are good. But I have personal knowledge of two of the people he reviews and both reviews are factually incorrect at the very least. I call BS on this ‘person’

Emmett I noticed Jason Bond name in this review. May be it is time to update your review on that con artist as he is becoming very popular and involves more and more naive people in his front running service.. He is very active on facebook.

Guys… everyone that sells you a shitload of indicators along with a system to understand them like John Carter and Hoffman have to be looked at with suspicion. Before you pay a dime with those dudes… get a free one month trial on Tradingview and see how you are doing with those two guys indicators. A lot of their stuff has been coded by some smart folks and they are available for free. Carter is the world champ to create new pricey studies but Hoffman is not far behind. I did not know they used to work together but this… Read more »

“However the only ‘course’ he sells are 4 training sessions that are included with three months trial of the DAS platform which is pricey like hell on its on. ” How can he sell a training session that is part of DAS, unless he is associated with DAS. Never heard of DAS Platform so looked it up. $200 a month. Can you tell he what this Platform offers over Sierra Chart that is worth $200 a month? Also “this is why he does not want anyone trading before they have at least 3 months of monitored trading, preferable with the… Read more »

I was a member in BBT room. I had serious problems with his method. He has this special way to get out of a losing trade where if he is in with one contract and it goes against him, he will then add 11 contracts to average down and get out with a tick profit. I saw one time where that didn’t work and he lost $1,955. This was from a one contract trade. Also, he barely trades in the room. You are lucky to see 3-5 trades a week. He is so skittish to take a trade. After he… Read more »

I wouldn’t be so sure if it was a live account. These shamsters create and use myriad tricks every year. It could very well be a DOM mocked up with coding to look like a real account. Ninjatrader to it’s shame has features to “rename” a sim account and to change the coloring of a dom to look like the default “live” version. DAS is also generic and can be modded by coding for different brokers. MT4 was reported long ago to have a “brokers” server version where the broker could spy and mess with client trades on the client… Read more »

They just keep piling up . Great article .. I also remember this ass hat in Carters room also. And dont get me start on the Fib Queen .. Talk about self fulfilling prophecies . Al her shit would line up perfect after the fact .. Outstanding stuff .. “I’ll put a Fib here, and wow Holy shit look how it just bounced off that 38.2 line ” as my bloats across the pond say “What a bunch of rubbish” … I would still love to see one of those big charts like they do for organized crime , and… Read more »

Might be one your best articles yet. Rob Hoffman is a one of the biggest scammers out there and I read he had nearly 1000 subscribers, though I do not know if that is true or not. But you did a Great job in showing how meaningless those trading competitions are. Those fake competitions are just one more piece of the puzzle of this whole corrupt industry.

Very true. I was in John Carter’s site for a wasted $80 trial where occasionally Hoffman could pop in, or more often ms. FibQueen babbling Bore-rindin would sub when Carter was “off/on vacation” and there were hundreds of subscribers. But I think WarriorTrading and the gray-hoodie trifecta have overtaken Carter by now with number of dupes concurrently in the room now. WT really needs a followup review. Entertaining reminders of CTUFake! lady who claims to be trading in addition to modeling on her social media and Fauxio multi world poohbah of trading baloney. lol, congrats on being world trading champion… Read more »

I’m with dtchurn, Warrior Trading needs an updated review. They put out so much nonsense, by default many new traders believe they must be reputable. You can read fiction such as Ross is very personable and easy to talk to. Just a regular nice guy, yes until they get your credit card information then don’t expect any attention afterwards. Possibly the most dangerous site for retail traders that exists because of the come all huddled masses and we will show you the way persona WT displays. With the amount of retail traders getting burned one would think the regulators are… Read more »

oooga, The point I was trying to make and argued with Mike M about was if you paint a picture of Ross simple as a BS artist, I think you are making a mistake. It is hard to explain in words, but the picture one generates is, “Oh he is a BS artist and I could spot that a mile away and only suckers would fall for it”. If you underestimate your enemy you have already lost the war. I don’t care how much you hate him, Ross is a very smart marketer and people will continue to get scammed… Read more »

I’ll add my own 2c where in my case, Ross and WarriorTrading was the last trading room and site I was fooled by almost two years ago. In fact,I found tradingschools ironically thanks to some people mentioning the review and Emmett’s in the room, where Ross or a shill replied “he’s just a felon”. Lo and behold I discovered the wonder of tradingschools’ incredible existence in this age and day of rampant internet fraud. And it kind of made sense only a reformed stock pumper with jailtime and nothing else to lose in life could choose to come clean and… Read more »

Right now he definitely believes his on bs which in his mind is brilliance. Hopefully, his ego will be his undoing and he will eventually have to pay for the financial hardships he is creating on a daily basis. IMO, they all have to pay in some shape or form and his day will come.

You did a much better job of explaining Ross scam than I did, as I was never a member and only read and saw what he was doing.

But one thing is clear this guy is leaps beyond your typical run of the mill BS con artist. As you and I pointed out he actual read the post here and reacted to it. In all the threads here I have never seen anyone react in such a brilliant, yes I know some hate that word, way. This guy should be on the most wanted scammer list.

We must be careful giving him props for anything because some new trader will twist that into believing he is a smart investor as well. I ascertain that he creates financial distress on a daily basis with his fantasy results. $583 into six figures in months, think about the insanity of that claim. He as a matter of fact posts his daily recap on you tube then viewers smoke his hopium as Cyn very eloquently put it. They comment like Ross if you, a regular guy can do it , then it will just take your tutelage and my hard… Read more »

Mike he is the hardest working and brightest scammer out there. As I have said the best scammers are not lazy or dumb. When things like the fake architect got mentioned he got rid of it. When I called him out on using Trader Vu, he redid the video. He may be a scammer, but he is the best of the best I have seen with relentless promotional BS.

Mike M, I hear you but have a different view. Look how Madoff scammed people. These Scammers do not wear horns and carry pitch forks. People need to realize this. They think they can spot a scammer a mile away and that he will be this either lazy or dumb or dirty looking or overall A-Hole. They think he will be the guy running a 3 shell Monte in the alley. But no, if they were, they would not be great scammers. You ask any of the Madoff victims and they will tell you how sincere he seemed. That is… Read more »

How ironic, I wrote a whole paragraph about Madoff to respond to you, but I erased it in the end because I felt it was too far of a stretch. Yet, it is true. There were supposedly smart individuals clamoring to give Madoff money to manage. This is the age old scenario, there will always be unscrupulous individuals looking to part the uninformed from their money.

Sometimes I do a terrible job at making my point. Let me first be clear, I agree all these scammers are low life scum with no morals. But if we just say Madoff is a POS low life bottom feeding scum, what picture comes into your head? When the next Madoff or Ross comes around they are not going to look or act like a low life scum of the universe. That is what I am trying to point out. Everyone thinks they will know a Madoff or Ross when they see one because they have this picture in their… Read more »

Rob, no misunderstanding here. It is beneficial for you speak the truth of these individuals. I admit to having so much disdain for them that my anger masks some of the other truths. It is better to understand as much of the con as possible.

All true, I just feel calling him a marketing genius may be misconstrued by the fresh meat he is setting traps for on a daily basis. I can not invalidate anything you have stated, but I will continue to call him soul less by promoting himself as the purveyor of truth in a cesspool of trading educators on the net today. All this being done with the ultimate deception in mind.

In some perverse way, that negative review actually helped him. He was so damn pissed off with my negative review, lol! It really put a fire under his ass, and he went ape crazy improving his marketing.

Adversity either kills us or makes us stronger. Hats off to Ross Cameron.

“CTUFake! lady ” Hey I like Summer. How could anyone not believe she day trades for a living? She could sell me anything. Heck she makes IP Amy look like dog food ( and I like Amy). I am such an easy sucker. Speaking of the women con artists, the review I remember that I thought was soooooo funny was actually the one on She Can Trade, Sarah, because when Emmett first said he wanted to review her, she was like oh great. I am sure this was due to all these moron radio show interviewers who bring on these… Read more »

Yes, the self-same. Funnily enough, even the ones he was working with at the time, Hubert Senters and John Carter did not believe in what he was doing, and actually recorded, well before the blowup, that they expected him to blow up.

He eventually did, as do all those who keep adding to losing positions while waiting, praying and smoking hopium that the market will turn around so that they can exit a massive, overleveraged position with a profit of 2 ticks per contact, then boast that they made a few thousand on the trade.

Most of these trading educators that run websites and trade can just keep averaging down until they are in the green, if they end up in the green. They can claim all profitable days by adding to losing positions. Think about it, why would they care anyway if they are replenishing their trading accounts with the monthly churn. Clay Trader puts up you tube videos where he averages into a position sometimes being down 4 times what eventually he takes for a meager profit. Just throwing darts at a chart because it is “over extended” is an extremely dangerous way… Read more »